Prepare Usody USB-pendrive

The purpose of this guide is to show the necessary steps to prepare a Usody pendrive in order to retrieve device meta-data and upload it to the Usody inventory, or in addition erase the data.

This guide is only valid for users of Usody Hardware Metadata 2022 and Usody Data Erasure v14, the Usody pendrive setup for previous versions can be found at this link Usody Pendrive 11.

Introduction

The Usody pendrive is a bootable USB pendive that includes a Linux Operating System and an Usody application to create Snapshots of your device's hardware, as well as other tests to evaluate the quality of the device.

Requirements

• a USB pendrive with at least 500 MB of total capacity,
• an ISO image containing the Usody software (in this setup we explain where to download it),
• a specific application to burn this ISO image (in this setup we suggest one).

Step 1 - Download ISO image

1. Click on your profile icon, in the drop-down menu click on the "Workbench" option.

   

2. Click on the Download ISO button depending on whether you want to inventory and test or erase the data:

   • To download the inventory and test only ISO image click on "Download ISO" in the Usody Hardware Metadata 2022 section.

     

   • To download the erase ISO image click on "Download ISO" in the Usody Data Erasure v14 section.

     

Step 2 - Burn ISO image

For copying the ISO image to the pendrive, we recommend using Etcher.

In our case we use Etcher as can be seen in the following figures:

Remember that burning the ISO will format the flash drive during the process, which will erase all data stored on it.

1. Click on "Select image" and select the previously downloaded ISO file.

   

2. Click on "Select target" and select the flash drive.

   

3. Click on "Flash!" and this will start the process of burning the ISO file onto the flash drive.

   

Wait until the application has finished with burning the ISO on the pendrive.

Step 3 - Add the settings file into the pendrive

The settings.ini file contains your user credentials in the form of a token that allows you to upload your Snapshots to your inventory and the configuration of what the Usody software should do. For each type of configuration there is a different settings.ini file.

If you do not perform this step, the snapshot files will be stored on the pendrive drive, you must copy them and upload them via the web.

1. Download the settings.ini file depending on whether you want to inventory and test or just delete the data:

   • To download the settings file for inventory and test only, click on the "Download settings file" button in the Usody Hardware Metadata 2022 section.

     

   • To download the inventory and erasure settings file, click on the "Download settings file" button in the Usody Data Erasure v14 section.

     

     Note: Each type of erasure has different settings, download the one you need accordingly.

2. Overwrite the settings.ini file inside the 'settings' folder

   1. If you use Windows, the partition is mounted automatically just by connecting the pendrive to the PC and the explorer is opened

   2. In case of Linux, the partition has to be mounted manually:

      1. Enter the following command line command to identify the "Hidden FAT16 < 32M" partition

         sudo fdisk -l

         The result of executing the command is as follows:

         

         Note: In our case it is /dev/sdb3.

      2. Mount the partition

         sudo mount /dev/sda3 /mnt

      3. Copy the settings.ini file to the partition folder

         sudo cp /home/$USER/Downloads/settings.ini /mnt/settings/settings.ini

      4. Unmount the USB

         sudo umount /mnt

To verify that the Usody pendrive is working properly follow this tutorial

Congratulation, you have your Usody pendrive ready to retrieve device meta-data and upload it to the your inventory!